EngCon 2017 schedule

Panel (E5 2108)

Been There, Done That

Presented by the Waterloo Engineering Society

Come ask the "experts" all your questions about FYDP! Students from a variety of disciplines will be available in a Q&A style panel to share their experiences on everything design project.

Panelists will include:

• Matthew Post (SyDe) who worked working on an Underwater Welding Arm.
• Mike Magliocchi (ECE) who worked on Smart Hockey Gloves.
• Kathryn Lynch (MTE) who worked on a physical board for internet-connected chess.

Advanced Skills (E5 2004)

Keysight Korner: Ten Things You Didn’t Know Your Oscilloscope Could Do To Advance Your Ideas

Presented by Peter Schweiger

Intense customer co-creation and unique scope on a chip technology has transformed what Oscilloscopes can do and the impact they can have on your projects and productivity providing insight for every aspect of electronic system debug. This one hour presentation will go through surprising aspects of what Scopes, already in Waterloo labs, can actually do if you dive into their capabilities. From advanced triggering, to unattended testing, frequency analysis to serial decodes, you are sure to be surprised, entertained and hopefully inspired by Peter Schweiger, long time employee at Agilent/Keysight Technologies.

Secret Sauce (E5 3101)

Team Formation: The Good, the Bad, and the Very Very Ugly

Presented by Prof. Ken McKay

€‹Wonderful! Instead of being assigned into a team, you have freedom of choice. That is the good news. It can also be the bad news. Many teams are designed from the start to flounder, churn, fray the nerves, and do poorly. In this presentation, we will talk about the harsh realities of teams and how teams should be 'engineered'.

Prof. Kenneth McKay, Department of Management Sciences, specializes in business processes, project management and organizational planning - focusing on effectiveness and efficiency when dealing with innovation. He has over forty years of experience with teams of all sorts in both academia and industry.

Who Are You Designing For Anyway?

Presented by Prof. Carolyn MacGregor

What do robotics, autonomous vehicles, big data visualization, artificial intelligence, and mobile apps have in common? They all have users – even if it is to build, start, stop, and do maintenance. Today, most people realize that designing in good usability and user experience can make or break products and services. In 20 minutes, we will have you identifying the obvious and not-so-obvious users of your design project. [Come to the workshop later in the day to learn some quick-and-dirty user-centred design methods for better understanding your users.]

Prof. Carolyn MacGregor has been teaching, doing research, and consulting in the field of Human Factors Engineering for over 30 years. She enjoys working with students –€“ from design courses to start-ups –€“ to help them find ways to leverage understanding of human abilities and limitations to create effective designs for tasks, interfaces, and systems. Prof. MacGregor is the current Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of Systems Design Engineering.

Industry Perspectives (E5 3102)

The Intersection of the Physical World and Ideas

Presented by Gary Mousseau and Aaron Shull

As the sophistication of 3D printing grows, so too does the likelihood that a print will contain someone else’s intellectual property (IP). 3D Bridge Systems is a start-up that pushes the bounds of imagination, by creating a space where inventors and designers can get paid fairly for their ideas, and where consumers can securely print designs that are protected by IP law and meet quality and warranty standards.

The problem is that there is no system at present which can securely exchange 3D print files, manage the quality and administer warranties for 3D printed objects, manage IP rights, and control regulated goods.

3D Bridge Systems has designed a unique solution which addresses these problems. Find out how we got here.

Gary Mousseau is a founding inventor for BlackBerry, named inventor on several of BlackBerry's key patents, and an award-winning innovator. He has 36 years of data communication experience, significant operational experience, and has managed software development teams as a former VP of Software at BlackBerry and at a number start-ups. Gary also has significant expertise in developing bridging systems and systems designed to resolve challenges associated with emerging technologies. He has a Bachelor of Mathematics and Computer Science with a minor in Business Administration.

Aaron Shull is an expert in international law and global governance. He is currently the chief operating officer and general counsel of a world class public policy think tank. Aaron is a practices law and teaches at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law and the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, and Wilfrid Laurier University. He has a joint Honours Bachelor of Arts, a Master of Arts in International Affairs, a Bachelor of Laws, a Master of Laws, and was a staff editor for the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.

Moving Beyond Your Capstone Project: Why 3D printing Nutella is hard

Presented by Andrew Finkle

€‹You have put in long caffeine-fuelled nights preparing your capstone project, you have a stellar demo day, but what is next? Andrew will discuss how he turned an idea for 3D printing Nutella into a local startup, Structur3d Printing. His talk will cover successes and pitfalls of creating a Canadian hardware startup, as well as resources and next steps for turning your capstone idea into an upstart.

Andrew Finkle is a UW Nanotechnology Engineer and founder at Structur3d Printing. With the launch of their Discov3ry product line in 2014, Structur3d has disrupted the advanced fabrication space by expanding the material capabilities of 3D printing to include silicones, biomaterials, and yes, even Nutella. Andrew is also pursuing his PhD in Chemical Engineering and the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology with a focus on new nano-material formulations for 3D printing.

Panel (E5 2108)

Been There, Done That

Presented by the Waterloo Engineering Society

Come ask the "experts" all your questions about FYDP! Students from a variety of disciplines will be available in a Q&A style panel to share their experiences on everything design project.

Panelists will include:

• Matthew Post (SyDe) who worked working on an Underwater Welding Arm.
• Mike Magliocchi (ECE) who worked on Smart Hockey Gloves.
• Kathryn Lynch (MTE) who worked on a physical board for internet-connected chess.

Advanced Skills (E5 2004)

Tips and Tricks to Successfully Troubleshoot Your Circuits

Presented by National Instruments

Join National Instruments in an interactive session covering useful troubleshooting methods to ensure your physical design behaves as it should. Walk through the process of using circuit simulations in Multisim to validate your design then build and troubleshoot common issues using NI ELVIS.

Secret Sauce (E5 3101)

Urgent, Pervasive, Important: Problem-centric Design

Presented by Prof. Derek Wright

Beyond flexing the tech muscles you’ve developed throughout undergrad, a good capstone project solves a problem that is urgent, pervasive, and important. “But, but, but... I think it’s really cool!” is not sufficient. Over 50% of tech start-ups fail, and pouring money onto a cool-but-useless concept is a major reason for this high failure rate. This session will give an overview of a strategic process that you and your team can use to develop and vet capstone concepts, based on a successful commercial product strategy framework. Don’t make a capstone project, solve a problem.

Prof. Derek Wright (UWaterloo ECE BASc ‘03/ MASc ‘€˜05, UToronto ECE/IBBME PhD ‘09) accidentally spent six years in Product Strategy, Sales, and Business Development at Maplesoft and BlackBerry before returning to UWaterloo as an ECE faculty member. This business experience remains valuable by thinking of students, alumni, faculty, and programs as market segments and products. He teaches circuits, improves the undergrad programs, and researches VLSI and multidomain devices. He is also a big piano geek.

Capstone Lessons Learned

Presented by Jim Baleshta

“It is important to learn from the mistakes of others; life is too short to make them all yourself”.

Mechanical engineering students are required to complete a “Lessons Learned Template” for their capstone project (group) final report.

The lessons cited (ME482 Winter 2017) were quite good, and from this a master document of 202 selected learnings was created. The challenge ensued to devise a means to convey this information to the incoming ME 481 capstone students.

This presentation will discuss this conveyance, with a sub-topic of the methods used by newly formed capstone teams to arrive at a consensus of the “best” lessons from the master list. To add to the sauce, the top-ten lessons selected by 25 teams were examined to determine overall top 10 choices. This will be revealed during the presentation.

Jim Baleshta, P.Eng., is a Design Engineer experienced with a wide variety of design projects, including capstone instruction (ME481 and 482) for several years. Jim’s interests and specializations are in the design of research apparatus, medical equipment development, consumer product design including outdoor and recreational equipment, industrial design, graphics and fine art.

Industry Perspectives (E5 3102)

Agile Hardware and Software Development

Presented by Kevin Wright (Alert Labs)

Agile development has become the standard for modern software development over the past decade, but in the modern age of 3D printing and rapid turn-around of circuit board manufacturing, many of the same underlying principals of Agile software development can also be applied to the early design stages of electro-mechanical products as well. In this talk, we’ll discuss the history and philosophy of Agile development and specifically discuss the early design iterations of ‘€˜Flowie’ –€“ The water flow detection product from Alert Labs.

Velocity and Entrepreneurship

Presented by Jay Shah (Velocity)

Panel (E5 2108)

Live Design Reviews: Hardware, software, and mechanical

Presented by Prof. Steve Lambert and Trevor Smouter

Want to see what a design review is like before you head into yours? Watch as MME and ECE instructors show you how hardware, software, and mechanical design reviews can help you learn from common errors, design weaknesses, and omissions.

Advanced Skills (E5 2004)

From Pitch to Prototype, Design Good Experience

Presented by Prof. Carolyn MacGregor

Don’t leave designing in good usability and user experience until the last minute. Learn some low-resource, high-return design activities that you and your team can be doing right now. Learn the difference between usability and user experience. Get to know how you can use Reconnaissance Missions to understand potential users, develop Persona Briefs, and Walk-A-Mile in your (potential) user's shoes with your early design ideas.

Prof. Carolyn MacGregor has been teaching, doing research, and consulting in the field of Human Factors Engineering for over 30 years. She enjoys working with students –€“ from design courses to start-ups –€“ to help them find ways to leverage understanding of human abilities and limitations to create effective designs for tasks, interfaces, and systems. Prof. MacGregor is the current Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of Systems Design Engineering.

Secret Sauce (E5 3101)

Creativity and the Capstone Project

Presented by Prof. David Wang

You are finally given an opportunity to work with your friends on a 4th Year Design or some other Capstone project. You quickly meet and discover that, despite the opportunity, you have no idea where to start. As engineers, you are often taught all the fundamentals of producing a sound design but there is very little in the curriculum that teaches a group of students how to be creative. In this seminar, the speaker draws on years of experience in successfully guiding students through their design projects as well as his background in entrepreneurship to help give some ideas on how to kickstart your project and to choose a project that is interesting and useful.

Prof. David Wang is a professor and Teaching Quality Coordinator in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has supervised over 100 Fourth Year Design projects over the years. He also has had experience with start-up companies, being one of the founders of Handshake Interactive Technologies Inc. that, in 2003, raised 3 MM in Venture Capitalist financing. The speaker also shown creativity in music, having been awarded two Canadian Gospel Music Association Awards for Best Rock Album.

Industry Perspectives (E5 3102)

Co-evolution of Hardware and Software in Biotechnology

Presented by Mike Tsay

€‹Over the past twenty years, the role of software and bioinformatics has rapidly evolved from a complementary science to the driving force in current research. In general, because of the sheer complexity of biological systems, the demands for software and analytics can be quite challenging. In this talk we cover the co-evolution of the field of bioinformatics along with hardware and technological advances from a personal perspective. We identify some of the major challenges and pitfalls of bioinformatics simulation software and biological datasets to encourage more thought towards proper design of software and experiments.

Mike Tsay has been actively involved in bioinformatics software development for the past 15+ years. His areas of expertise revolve around thermodynamic modelling of RNA and DNA hybridization. More recently he has been involved in biologic networks such as miRNA-gene and protein-protein networks and machine learning as applied to Cancer gene signatures. He lives in Toronto with his wife and 3 children.

A to Z of AI/ML : A Quick Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Capabilities and Tools

Presented by Prof. Mark Crowley

Amazing advances in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) technology in the past few years have now made it possible to include complex data analysis, pattern recognition, learning and decision making abilities into systems with accessible software tools. This talk will introduce some of the broad terms and concepts needed to navigate the world of AI/ML algorithms and tools so you can decide if they might be useful for your design projects. We'll also dicuss some guidelines on how to design a system for using AI/ML technologies and pointers and on where to look for the right tools for your problem.

Mark Crowley is an Assistant Professor in the ECE Department at the University of Waterloo, a core member of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation and a Fellow at Element AI. His research seeks dependable and transparent ways to augment human decision making in complex domains in the presence of spatial structure, large scale streaming data, or uncertainty. He carries out collaborative research in areas such as computational sustainability, autonomous driving and medical imaging which offer unique challenges for traditional algorithms. His work focuses on the fields of Reinforcement Learning, Deep Learning and Ensemble Methods.